2 ALL RIGHTS ARE STRICTLY RESERVED. ANY PORTION OF THIS PAPER SHALL NOT BE REPRODUCED, COPIED, OR TRANSLATED TO ANY OTHER FORMS WITHOUT PERMISSION FROM PHISON ELECTRONICS CORPORATION. Phison may make changes to specifications and product description at any time without notice. PHISON and the Phison logo are trademarks of Phison Electronics Corporation, registered in the United States and other countries. Products and specifications discussed herein are for reference purposes only. Copies of documents which include information of part number or ordering number, or other materials may be obtained by ing us at or 2013 Phison Electronics Corp. All Rights Reserved.

10 1.3. Product Block Diagram Figure 1-2 PS SATA SSD Product Block Diagram 1.4. Flash Management Error Correction Code (ECC) Flash memory cells will deteriorate with use, which might generate random bit errors in the stored data. Thus, PS3108 SATA SSD applies the BCH ECC algorithm, which can detect and correct errors occur during read process, ensure data been read correctly, as well as protect data from corruption Wear Leveling NAND flash devices can only undergo a limited number of program/erase cycles, and in most cases, the flash media are not used evenly. If some areas get updated more frequently than others, the lifetime of the device would be reduced significantly. Thus, Wear Leveling is applied to extend the lifespan of NAND Flash by evenly distributing write and erase cycles across the media. Phison provides advanced Wear Leveling algorithm, which can efficiently spread out the flash usage through the whole flash media area. Moreover, by implementing both dynamic and static Wear Leveling algorithms, the life expectancy of the NAND flash is greatly improved. 2

11 Bad Block Management Bad blocks are blocks that include one or more invalid bits, and their reliability is not guaranteed. Blocks that are identified and marked as bad by the manufacturer are referred to as Initial Bad Blocks. Bad blocks that are developed during the lifespan of the flash are named Later Bad Blocks. Phison implements an efficient bad block management algorithm to detect the factory-produced bad blocks and manages any bad blocks that appear with use. This practice further prevents data being stored into bad blocks and improves the data reliability TRIM TRIM is a feature which helps improve the read/write performance and speed of solid-state drives (SSD). Unlike hard disk drives (HDD), SSDs are not able to overwrite existing data, so the available space gradually becomes smaller with each use. With the TRIM command, the operating system can inform the SSD which blocks of data are no longer in use and can be removed permanently. Thus, the SSD will perform the erase action, which prevents unused data from occupying blocks all the time SMART SMART, an acronym for Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology, is an open standard that allows a hard disk drive to automatically detect its health and report potential failures. When a failure is recorded by SMART, users can choose to replace the drive to prevent unexpected outage or data loss. Moreover, SMART can inform users of impending failures while there is still time to perform proactive actions, such as copy data to another device Over-Provision Over Provisioning refers to the inclusion of extra NAND capacity in a SSD, which is not visible and cannot be used by users. With Over Provisioning, the performance and IOPS (Input/Output Operations per Second) are improved by providing the controller additional space to manage P/E cycles, which enhances the reliability and endurance as well. Moreover, the write amplification of the SSD becomes lower when the controller writes data to the flash. 3

12 Firmware Upgrade Firmware can be considered as a set of instructions on how the device communicates with the host. Firmware will be upgraded when new features are added, compatibility issues are fixed, or read/write performance gets improved Low Power Management DIPM/HIPM Mode SATA interfaces contain two low power management states for power saving: Partial and Slumber modes. For Partial mode, the device has to resume to full operation within 10 microseconds, whereas the device will spend 10 milliseconds to become fully operational in the Slumber mode. SATA interfaces allow low power modes to be initiated by Host (HIPM, Host Initiated Power Management) or Device (DIPM, Device Initiated Power Management). As for HIPM, Partial or Slumber mode can be invoked directly by the software. For DIPM, the device will send requests to enter Partial or Slumber mode Power Loss Protection: Flushing Mechanism Power Loss Protection is a mechanism to prevent data loss during unexpected power failure. DRAM is a volatile memory and frequently used as temporary cache or buffer between the controller and the NAND flash to improve the SSD performance. However, one major concern of the DRAM is that it is not able to keep data during power failure. Accordingly, the PS3108 applies the GuaranteedFlush technology, which requests the controller to transfer data to the cache. For PS3108, DDR performs as a cache, and its sizes include 256MB or 512MB. Only when the data is fully committed to the NAND flash will the controller send acknowledgement (ACK) to the host. Such implementation can prevent false-positive performance and the risk of power cycling issues. Additionally, it is critical for a controller to shorten the time the in-flight data stays in the cache. Thus, Phison s PS3108 applies an algorithm to reduce the amount of data resides in the cache to provide a better performance. This SmartCacheFlush technology allows incoming data to only have a pit stop in the cache and then move to the NAND flash at once. If the flash is jammed due to particular file sizes (such as random 4KB data), the cache will be treated as an organizer, consolidating incoming data into groups before written into the flash to improve write amplification. In sum, with Flush Mechanism, PS3108 proves to provide the reliability required by consumer, industrial, and enterprise-level applications. 4

13 1.7. Advanced Device Security Features Secure Erase Secure Erase is a standard ATA command and will write all 0xFF to fully wipe all the data on hard drives and SSDs. When this command is issued, the SSD controller will empty its storage blocks and return to its factory default settings Write Protect When a SSD contains too many bad blocks and data are continuously written in, then the SSD might not be usable anymore. Thus, Write Protect is a mechanism to prevent data from being written in and protect the accuracy of data that are already stored in the SSD SSD Lifetime Management Terabytes Written (TBW) TBW (Terabytes Written) is a measurement of SSDs expected lifespan, which represents the amount of data written to the device. To calculate the TBW of a SSD, the following equation is applied: TBW = [(NAND Endurance) x (SSD Capacity) x (WLE)] / WAF NAND Endurance: NAND endurance refers to the P/E (Program/Erase) cycle of a NAND flash. SSD Capacity: The SSD capacity is the specific capacity in total of a SSD. WLE: Wear Leveling Efficiency (WLE) represents the ratio of the average amount of erases on all the blocks to the erases on any block at maximum. WAF: Write Amplification Factor (WAF) is a numerical value representing the ratio between the amount of data that a SSD controller needs to write and the amount of data that the host s flash controller writes. A better WAF, which is near 1, guarantees better endurance and lower frequency of data written to flash memory. 5

14 1.9. An Adaptive Approach to Performance Tuning Throughput Based on the available space of the disk, PS3108 will regulate the read/write speed and manage the performance of throughput. When there still remains a lot of space, the firmware will continuously perform read/write action. There is still no need to implement garbage collection to allocate and release memory, which will accelerate the read/write processing to improve the performance. Contrarily, when the space is going to be used up, PS3108 will slow down the read/write processing, and implement garbage collection to release memory. Hence, read/write performance will become slower Predict & Fetch Normally, when the Host tries to read data from the SSD, the SSD will only perform one read action after receiving one command. However, PS3108 applies Predict & Fetch to improve the read speed. When the host issues sequential read commands to the SSD, the SSD will automatically expect that the following will also be read commands. Thus, before receiving the next command, flash has already prepared the data. Accordingly, this accelerates the data processing time, and the host does not need to wait so long to receive data. 6

19 Electrostatic Discharge (ESD) Table 3-10 PS SATA SSD Contact ESD Specification Device Capacity Temperature Relative Humidity +/- 4KV Result 2.5 SSD 240GB 24.0 C 49% (RH) Device functions are affected, but EUT will be back to its normal or operational state automatically. PASS EMI Compliance FCC: CISPR22 CE: EN55022 BSMI MTBF MTBF, an acronym for Mean Time Between Failures, is a measure of a device s reliability. Its value represents the average time between a repair and the next failure. The measure is typically in units of hours. The higher the MTBF value, the higher the reliability of the device. The predicted result of Phison s PS SATA SSD is more than 1,000,000 hours Certification & Compliance RoHS SATA III (SATA Rev. 3.1) Up to ATA/ATAPI-8 (Including S.M.A.R.T) 11

30 8. REFERENCES The following table is to list out the standards that have been adopted for designing the product. Title RoHS msata Serial ATA Revision 3.1 ATA-8 spec FCC: CISPR22 CE: EN55022 BSMI: Table 8-1 List of References Acronym/Source Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive; for further information, please contact us at or Federal Communications Commission; for further information, please contact us at or Consumer electronics certification; for further information, please contact us at or The Bureau of Standards, Metrology and Inspection; for further information, please contact us at or 22

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